Re: [Muine] Song information dialog

[Link Dupont <link subpop net>]

As always, this is simply my own opinion on things. :o)

On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 10:49, Lars Weber wrote:
> It's always tempting to hack up user interfaces with glade...
> 
> Jorn Baayen <jbaayen dds nl> wrote:
> > > > > > 1. It will be read-only, we won't do tagging. Tagging is
> > > > > > something that belongs in a tagging app, which will be much
> > > > > > better at doing the job.
> 
> Hmmm... because of "direct manipulation" considerations I personally
> always thought that it would actually be a good thing to provide
> tag-manipulation functionality with music players that work with some kind
> of music library; well, at least if it can be integrated in an
> non-obtrusive way.

I agree. I hate having to open up easytag to fix a typo. This also goes
along with my idea of musicbox/musictag. Where musictag is actually a
small stand-alone app, that would be called from within musicbox when a
tag needed to be edited.

> The editing functionality wouldn't need to be suitable for mass-tagging of
> files (that's *really* functionality that belongs inside a separate app);
> however, it would for example provide an easy way to rename single album
> or track titles (e.g. to fix spelling errors) or to add some missing
> information (e.g. year of release).
> 
> UI-wise there could perhaps be a button in the Album Information dialog
> (also see below) that would bring up a dialog similar to the following:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab1.png
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab2.png
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/edit-album-tab3.png

I LOVE these mockups. Well done.

> > > > > > 2. We want it to display the following information, at least:
> > > > > > - Song title
> > > > > > - Song artists
> > > > > > - Song performers, if any
> > > > > > - Year of release
> 
> One might think about whether individual tracks really need their own info
> dialog... anyway, here is a simple mockup of how such a dialog may look
> like:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/track-info.png

Doesn't makes sense to me. Individual track info is displayed in the
main UI. Muine seems to be more album based anyway, so having a nice
album info dialog is more important.

> (Perhaps it would be better to also prefix the title and the artist
> accordingly and perhaps to right-align the prefixes.)
> 
> > > > > > Then, what do we do with the associated album information?
> > > > > > - Cover image
> > > > > > - Album tracks
> 
> Another mockup using only standard Gtk widgets:
> 
>   http://brokenbits.de/lars/cruft/album-info.png

I don't like this quite as much as the above ones.

> (The mockup doesn't include the "Edit Album..." Button mentioned above.)
> 
> The small-print section below the title would also be the place to display
> other secondary information like "Performed by..." for example.
> 
> For albums with tracks by different artists it would also make sense to
> display the artist alongside the tracks I think.
> 
> > > > A thing we need to decide on:
> > > > Say, the user selects a song, calls the info window. We show song info,
> > > > alright, but what do we do with the album info? do we put like a
> > > > separator under the straight song info and then put the album info? or a
> > > > link to the album info? or a button?
> 
> As I said, perhaps a thing that should be decided first is: is there
> really any need for a separate Track Info dialog?

No.

> Regards,
> Lars
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-- 
Link Dupont <link subpop net>